Toxin taints Cape Fear River drinking water

Wednesday

Jun 7, 2017 at 4:51 PMJun 7, 2017 at 4:51 PM

By Vaughn Hagerty, For GateHouse Media

WILMINGTON — A chemical replacement for a key ingredient in Teflon linked to cancer and a host of other ailments has been found in the drinking water system of the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority (CFPUA), which cannot filter it.

Known commercially as GenX, the contaminating compound is made by the Chemours Co. at Fayetteville Works, a 2,150-acre industrial site straddling the Cumberland-Bladen county line along the Cape Fear River, about 100 miles upstream from Wilmington.

Other water systems that tap the Cape Fear, including some that serve portions of Brunswick and Pender counties, likely have GenX present as well -- though only CFPUA has been tested.

“My estimate is that about 250,000 people are affected in the three counties,” said Detlef Knappe, a professor at N.C. State University and one of the researchers who traced the toxin from Fayetteville to Wilmington.

Chemours and DuPont, which formed Chemours in 2015 from business units including the GenX manufacturer, have produced GenX since 2009. That was four years after DuPont agreed to phase out a chemical called C8 and paid a $16.5 million U.S. EPA fine and settlement for failing to release studies showing C8 may cause health problems. In February, the companies settled a class-action lawsuit involving C8 water contamination in the mid-Ohio Valley for $670.7 million.

In 2012, a research team detected GenX in the Cape Fear downriver from Fayetteville Works. Other teams found it again in 2013-14 and as recently as last December. Results of river water samples drawn last month are pending. Upriver from Fayetteville Works, none was found.

In a statement provided this week, Chemours officials said they are aware of the studies and that “additional water emissions abatement technology” was added to the Fayetteville Works plant in November 2013. That installation occurred more than three years prior to the latest confirmed discovery of GenX in the Cape Fear downstream from the plant. The company did not provide details on the abatement technology.

The 2013-14 tests included sampling at various points in the water cleaning process at CFPUA’s Sweeney Water Treatment Plant in Wilmington. At each step, researchers found GenX, along with a number of substances related to C8 and GenX but about which scientists know little aside from chemical structure. In some cases, these “novel” substances were seen at concentrations far exceeding that observed for GenX.

They continued to find GenX and the “novel” substances at the end of the treatment line, where freshly treated drinking water enters pipes feeding faucets throughout New Hanover County.

‘Trying to deal with it’

Frank Styers, chief operations officer of CFPUA, last week said the utility is aware of the most recent study and its findings.

“We think these type of studies are important and often lead to better regulation at the state and federal level,” he said. “Our drinking water continues to meet all state and federal drinking water standards. We would support proper regulation to improve water quality in the river or prevent compounds such as this from being discharged in the river.”

Officials at the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality (NCDEQ), charged with regulating pollutants released by manufacturers such as Chemours, last week said the agency has seen the studies and plans to meet with Knappe this month before deciding how to proceed.

The EPA, in response to emailed questions, wrote: “In its review of the GenX premanufacture submission (for approval to make it), EPA determined that the chemical could be commercialized if there were no releases to water.”

The spokeswoman said the EPA would “check on this” when it was pointed out that the studies showed GenX was found in both the Cape Fear and CFPUA water. No response had been received by Wednesday.

Health concerns

Research has linked C8, the chemical GenX replaced, to risks for kidney and testicular cancer, liver damage and a number of other potentially serious health problems. Similar data for GenX is scarce, but the little that exists has some researchers concerned it may pose at least some of the same problems.

A fundamental challenge facing regulators is that no standards exist to set thresholds at which concentrations of GenX in drinking water are safe -- mainly because the chemical is relatively new and few studies on health effects are available.

EPA has established what it calls a “lifetime health advisory” for C8 in drinking water of 70 parts per trillion. The advisory is chiefly informational and not legally enforceable. C8 is also known generically as perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA).

The average concentration of GenX measured at CFPUA’s water intake on the Cape Fear in 2013-14 was 631 parts per trillion -- nine times the EPA advisory level for C8.

Commercial labs in the United States currently are unable to test for GenX, Knappe said, so CFPUA cannot monitor the system’s water for GenX on its own.

“There’s no obligation (for Chemours) to inform a utility like Wilmington and tell them, ‘You may find this new chemical in your water,’ " Knappe said. "So since this chemical is new and isn’t regulated, it isn’t communicated to a public utility that the upstream discharge may contain this chemical. Without our work, basically nobody would know that this chemical is actually in the water.”

Reverse osmosis -- including as part of a household water-filtration system – might be effective at filtering GenX and the other compounds from the water, Knappe said. But for a municipal system such as CFPUA, such a step would cost millions of dollars to install and maintain and take years to accomplish.

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